Welcome to the Hunger Games read-along! Beginning July 1st, 2010, we will be reading and chatting about one chapter a day of both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins in anticipation of the release of Mockingjay on August 24th.

In the unlikely event that this is your first read of these amazing books, welcome! And more importantly, beware of spoilers! There will be spoilers.

Friday, August 13, 2010

In which gamemakers faint and drop things in reaction to the punk-ness! Peeta was a punk, too, and now everyone is worried. But they get perfect scores, as Haymitch says, "so the others will have no choice but to target you." Eep! Not a reward for awesomeness? But Plutarch loves Katniss! Right?

Katniss is now actively and publicly defying the Capitol, and plans to continue to do so up until her death. "The Capitol will have killed me...but not my spirit. What better way to give hope to the rebels?" Anyone? Any better ways leaping to mind? Do you think she's going overboard by imagining her face painted on banners?

The victors go on stage, each giving speeches about the bond between the victors and the Capitol, so now, even the Capitol audience is calling out for change. Katniss twirls and Cinna's the most wonderful rebel stylist in the world and I want to marry him forever. Paul Bettany, maybe?

Some questions:
Katniss warms up to Peeta on the roof. Do you think she would be so open with him if she thought there was a possibility of going home to Gale?

Remind me, how would Peeta know what Rue looked like all covered in flowers? Didn't the film cut away at that point? Was he using his imagee-nation?

How organized do you think these speeches were? Is this something that everyone decided ahead of time, or was it spontaneous?

Becks, I'm only on career number 2. I read a statistic once that said retirees in the US have had an average of 9 careers. NINE! Maybe one of my next 7 will be casting agent...I used to know a few. They were fun.

1. I actually thought there was a possibility they might shag the night before the roof day. Not to turn it into some steamy romance novel, but seeing as you're both about to die, why the hell not? It's not like Katniss is that morally pure; she admitted that she would have been a food prostitute with that Peacekeeper dude if she had been old enough. Oh well, there's still one more night.

2. I've seen dozens of beautiful pictures of Rue covered in flowers on the internet, and I know for a fact none of the artists ever watched Katniss deck Rue in flowers. Peeta knows what Rue looks like, it doesn't take that much imagination to follow Katniss' description.

3. Well it didn't sound like anyone went up to K&P during training and said "let's say this during the interviews" so I'm guessing they all just fed off of each other.

As for Katniss and Peeta being punks, somehow I have a feeling they weren't the only punks. Mags said she was gonna take a nap. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if Johanna just did naughty things with herself the whole time. Sorry if it sounds like I have a dirty mind - she started it by walking around naked all the time.

I'm only planning on reading one more chapter tonight (to finish up part II), but my plan for the rest of the book is this:

I will write my initial, first-read, reactions to each chapter into a word document. That will be the first thing I post each day when the new blog comes up on this site. Then I'll answer the questions and participate in the discussion from the perspective of someone who's finished the book (trying to avoid writing spoilers of course).

Crap. I forgot to write in my first post, I think the training scores are completely irrelevant. Everyone is familiar with everyone else's strengths and weaknesses, except maybe Katniss who doesn't seem to have a very good attention span - or at least doesn't share all her knowledge with us. I don't think any tribute would have a different strategy if instead of 12, the scores had been 1, 6, 42, or -100.